One word? When seven would do…

No prizes for getting that one Merry 😉

Feeling loads better today, no idea what yesterday was about but clearly nothing too life threatening. This morning we were all up and dressed early as Tony was delivering a film projector for Ady. Davies was trying to teach Scarlett to play battleships, which was always going to be tricky as he is not 100% reliable himself. Davies, with some helpful additions from Scarlett narrated a piece for the Sussex newsletter about the chicks hatching so we got that emailed across. A flurry of text exchanges with Lucy meant we packed up a picnic and met up with them at the park. The children launched straight into a game leaving us to chat – they’ve only watched the Harry Potter film once but already the name Hermione which took me about a year to confidently pronounce is tripping off their tongues as Davies is Harry (complete with his glasses this afternoon :lol:) and Scarlett is Herminone. They had a really good run around and then Lucy and the Rs went off to meet her Mum while we headed into town to get birthday gifts for Em’s Eve and Rei for tomorrow. I had a rummage around in the ash tray in my car where I often shove a couple of quid in change for parking and found just 40 pence – enough for half an hour in town, along with a crumpled up £20 note – so hurrah for that! 🙂 We whizzed into town, found suitable presents and got some suncream as our last bottle is in Ady’s car and might as well stay there for when we’re out and about in that before dashing back to the car again within our ticket time and then home.

We had a play with the chicks then D&S disappeared up to Davies’ bedroom playing games, they’ve got on really well today, a new and different set of people to pretend to be has really livened up their playing. 🙂 They snacked all afternoon on rice cakes and raisins that I’d taken to the park but they hadn’t eaten so when Ady arrived home dead on 5pm from college I suggested we head off to the beach for an hour or so before a late tea for them, so we did. It was really nice, the tide was in sadly as I’d hoped for more rock pool investigation type stuff but the children ran off way ahead to play chase the wave and clamber on the rocks which meant Ady and I actually got to walk along holding hands, something we’ve managed a bit recently actually, after nearly 7 years of not doing it due to pushing pushchairs or holding little people’s hands. Ady gave a stone skimming masterclass to Davies and I and we both managed to get 2 bounces out of some stones, which we were chuffed with, then we headed back home again.

The children had tea and a bath while I cooked our dinner and Ady spent ages rearranging the playroom to accomodate the projector, which he then spent all evening battling with to get it to work how he wants it to. He’s not managed it yet so is sulking and will need to confer with Tony I think. I’ve had a celebratory glass of wine because I felt so much better today (and also because my jeans have been falling down all day and I quite liked the pictures Ady took of me at the beach so am feeling all good about not drinking in the week so thought I’d treat myself :lol:) and now, because I’ll be driving lots of miles tomorrow, I’m off to bed.

Just been to the park with Davies and Scarlett and Lucy and the Rs. It was full of people with dogs, which is fine. All of the leads, which in a public park which allows this is again fine. What isn’t fine is allowing your bloody dogs to come right up to complete strangers, sniff at them, jump at them and wander through the middle of their picnics. I wouldn’t let my children do it so why the hell do people seem to think it’s ok to not even bother calling their dogs away from people or watching where they are going and stopping them from even approaching strangers.

I had to lay there while a dog came up right behind me, sniffed at me and lurked behind my ear before getting bored and wandering off while I was quite literally frozen in terror. I’m sure the owner was perfectly confident that it wasn’t going to savage me and to be honest on a rational level even I knew it was unlikely but I just wish people would realise that if someone is scared of dogs (which is actually quite a legitimate phobia) then allowing your bloody great dog to come and sniff at me while you wander way way behind is equivalent to throwing a jar of spiders in the face of an arachnaphonic. And actually even if I were a dog lover I’d really rather not have someone else’s canine come sniffing at my crotch and picnic.

There are days which stay in your memory forever, moments you will recall for life – times that you will always be able to say what you were doing when you heard that particular bit of news.

Occurances which inspire you to great creativity, singing, dancing, art, poetry, photography, music.

There are highs which make even the lowest of lows worth experiencing just so the peak at the end is that much greater.

We have lived through dark days, we have overcome great difficulties and scaled huge mountains.

I have tried, tried to fill the gap. I have started countless new blogs on topics as diverse as when I cut my toenails to what we’re having for dinner, but I know you have humoured me at best with your reading of them, knowing at heart I could only ever be second best. I’ve missed her, you’ve missed her, the sun has shone that bit dimmer in her absence, the birds don’t sing as sweetly, the words just don’t make me laugh as loud, but now she’s back.

Strike up the band, pull up a chair, boil up the kettle and prepare for:
the long awaited,
much anticipated,
never overrated,
rarely understated,
return negates the need to be berated,
beautifully crafted sentences I wish I had created,
posts through up issues to be debated,
no matter how much she writes we’re never satiated,

drum roll please:

Woman with the best needing the toilet desperately story ever!

Right decision not to go to MM definitely as I felt ill on and off through the day. No idea what it is but I’m off to bed in a minute with hopes to sleep it off and have another quiet day tomorrow before a madly busy one on Wednesday.

I did a bit of sneaky baking of bread rolls and flapjacks which we had for lunch, read lots of my book which I’ve decided I’ve now read enough to not be voting for as the winner of the orange prize for reading group and can therefore stop bothering with and get on to the next book. Davies did some xboxing, Scarlett got loads of her cuddly toys in ‘because they are my super animals, Mummy’ and did lots of little drawings on tiny pieces of paper which she kept bringing to me. She did loads of letters too and brought them over saying ‘this is my Best Ever Y Mummy, look!’. In the same way that suddenly Davies knew what all the letters were she seems to be learning them from various places – the Y is from the ends of Daddy, Happy and Birthday from cards to Ady and Frazer in the last couple of weeks. Davies ‘read’ a load of words in the back of a Dr Who book based on guesswork and a bit of sounding out – now that Scarlett is interested he is being pushed into reading to keep ahead of her and also to do his helpful big brother act – an excellent reason to read IMO! 😆

I did some jigsaw puzzles with them, one of a pirate ship and one world map one which they then played with. I was rather stunned to listen to them pointing out a few countries to each other too – they both found the UK really easily and as the puzzle had wildlife pictures on it too they were really quite confident in various other places like Australia (so that must be New Zealand there), Madagascar (yep those lemurs again!) and Africa.

We had lots of chicks out run around time and then they watched the Pink Panther before it was time to take Davies round to Beavers. Scarlett sat on my lap and talked nonsense to me until Ady got home and then he took over, taking Tarly round with him to collect Davies, popping out to get potatoes and lucozade and making shepherds pie for dinner while I sat on the sofa and was pathetic. We rehoused the chicks into a bigger box as they just seemed so crowded in their old one. This is enormous and they are huddled together under the heat lamp but keep scurring around exploring and seem happy with the space so this should do them until they go outside.

I’ve spent ages today watching the chicks, they really are very entertaining. When I was about Davies’ age my parents built a dove cote and got four white doves, which quickly became 8 white doves and for a while they had up to 20 at a time. They were very pretty and one summer I spent hours training them to land on me for feeding and tried to nurse one caught by a cat back to health (I failed, he died but it was a good try). The doves didn’t get replaced as they gradually died / left home, my Mum didn’t like the bird poo all over her car and the dove cote got taken down eventually, but I do quite like birds.

I’ve also spent ages today online reading about chickens and educating myself, I’ve joined a forum which looks like it has loads of experts on it so should get any help with anything I can’t find answers for. Now we just wait to see how they fare over the next few weeks and work out whether we have any cockrels or not. We’re moving them to a bigger box tomorrow which should do them until they are ready to go outside (6-8 weeks old -ish) although they may go into the garage before that depending on how noisy / smelly they get in the meantime.

I can’t believe how quickly they grow – from the wet little things that drag themselves out of the eggs all beak and feet it is just hours until they are the cute little chicks you see in pictures. By day 4/5 they are already looking like mini-chickens. They have wing feathers sprouting and sometime in the last 24 hours they all lost their egg tooth, their feet and beaks have grown more and their combs are already starting to show. Load of flapping of their wings and pruning of themselves is going on and they can already fly a teeny bit with a big hop. Their necks seem to have stretched giving them much more of a chicken look.

They all stand up and cheep when one of us approaches them and respond to our voices, particularly mine and will jump into a cupped hand. The cleavage placing was possibly an error as they will scramble up me to get to my chest now, which would be fine if they didn’t peck at my freckles, which doesn’t tickle at all now, it just hurts! Yesterday we only had one yellow one without an egg tooth which we assumed was Freddie, now I can’t tell the difference between the yellow ones again. Feathers (one wing) is still lots smaller than the others but growing and developing just the same and seeming to be pretty feisty – if it gets bullied as they grow we’ll have to seperate them.

From reading about chicks today it seems we were amazingly lucky to hatch at all and certainly to hatch 5 out of 6 of those second lot of eggs. Although we were lots more diligent this time that before we still didn’t adhere to all the scientific rules and tips I’ve been reading about today. I did learn about home made incubators today though, so if we did it again I might be tempted to try that rather than borrow one again or buy one. It would appear we were very lucky not to do any harm to the eggs that hadn’t hatched when we were lifting the incubator lid every few minutes while they started hatching too. 😳

Davies had another swimming lesson. The teacher was in the pool with them this week which seemed to mean they all got more one to one attention and practical help, normally she stands on the side.

Davies did really well, getting his legs up and kicking and ducking right under the water etc. I remember so clearly learning to swim myself in that pool, I didn’t really enjoy it at all, I’m still not that into swimming so I have huge empathy for it not coming totally naturally to him. Two out of the three triplets ended up coming out of the water this week for various reasons and from there initially being two or three of the children way better than the rest they all seem to have evened out now.

We left the swimming pool and went to the car boot sale. There is one which operates summertime only next door to the pick your own farm and keeps the same opening times as the PYO and yesterday was the first one of the year with the weather being suitably nice for it. PYO opened this weekend too and we might try and get along there for some strawberry picking later this week if the weather is good. We managed to only bring home one small carrier bag of stuff from the carboot sale, Barbie books for Tarly and a Barbie scooter complete with crash hat and matching holdall, a Gromit mug and various other W&G bits for Davies, some clothes for S from a woman selling everything for 20p and some last minute bits from the stall giving away their books and videos free at the end (I picked up a fish cook book and an ice cream book, Ady got an ET video and the first Harry Potter film).

We got stuck in a traffic jam behind what looked like a very nasty accident requiring fire engines on the scene to cut people out so sat in the car for about an hour before coming home. We needed various bits of food so I went for a walk into town to get them from the supermarket before coming home and starting to feel quite ill. I laid down on the sofa with a book but kept falling asleep. The children watched the Harry Potter film while I dozed and Ady cooked dinner, which was lovely, but I felt even worse after eating and at about 6pm went up to the bedroom to lie down for a while. I slept badly, with many visits from the children before getting up at 10pm to watch Lost and then going straight back to bed again at 11pm.

This morning we’ve decided not to go to MM as I really don’t feel up to either the drive or the socialising and we could do with saving the petrol money and the entrance fee anyway – this is our first month of the new budget and it’s going to be a tight squeeze from now until payday on Friday. I’m still not feeling at all great with a spaced out feeling, slightly wobby vision, a bit of a headache and a general intolerance for anyone around me including children, cats and chicks! I’ve just put the breadmaker on to make some dough for rolls for lunch and am planning some baking today (without childrens assistance) to make some nice food . It’s pouring with rain again and the children are quite happily playing. A day of drinking plenty of tea, maybe reading some books if the words stay still on the page and eating nice things is in order I think.

Not at all sure I can see the point in this but in the style of the album title of a band I quite like ‘Everyone else is doing it so why can’t we’ I’ll give it a go.

A quietish morning here with plenty of chick hanewndling and some making of birthday cards for my brother who is 31 today. I can’t quite believe that actually, I know that I’m 33 so clearly Frazer must be 31 but he still feels like my ‘baby’ brother. 😆 I read something once that talked about how our siblings are our history, how no matter where we go in life they are the ones who truly know and understand where we came from. Growing up Frazer and I were not especially close, our age gap was the wrong way round for our friends to mix in the same circles and heading off to single sex secondary schools meant we didn’t even know each others mates but there are good and bad memories that I have from childhood which Frazer could share with me and no one else alive could. We still have in jokes, he is still the person I think of every Christmas Eve when I watch Davies and Scarlett get all excited about Christmas and remember how Frazer and I had our little Christmas Eve rituals. I remember the things about him that used to wind me up when we were tiny, which counter he would choose when we played Monopoly, how it was only daring each other to do try harder that spurred me on to jump off higher diving boards, swing higher on the swings and run faster, jump further and climb higher. So many of the ‘when I were a lass’ stories I tell D&S feature ‘Uncle Frazer’ and I recall the times when it was him and I against the world, my parents, the mean kids at the park, the babysitter. I watch Davies and Scarlett replay all the old sibling games that I remember doing with Frazer and know that that relationship is one of the trickiest, most precious and special ones there is. I’ve not actually talked to him in person today, we did call round to my parents twice but he was out both times. His birthday will have been marred by United not winning the FA cup but I hope however he celebrated it he has had a bloody good day.

We’ve been doing lots of handling the chicks and lots of letting them have free run of larger areas of the lounge today. They are really fast when they run and flap their wings. 🙂 I had some cuddles with all of them on me which resulted in them pecking at my freckles which initially tickled and was amusing but actually quite hurt after a while and one of the moles on my neck was almost bleeding after several well aimed pecks!

Ady did a couple of runs to the tip which means we now have a lovely big clear space in our garage and we all went to collect a freecycled hamster cage with the intention of making it the chicks next home. Upon collection we realised it wasn’t actually any bigger than the storage box we’re using so we’ll refreecycle it and keep looking for something bigger for them.

We had lunch and went over to meet up with Chris and Julie at a localish village fete. It was not fantastic to be honest with very little there in the way of things to do / see. It was held in the grounds of a posh private boys boarding school so I amused myself by looking at the proudly displayed work of 10 year olds studying life cycles of caterpillars and butterflies and thinking that we covered that two years ago :). The children mostly amused themselves with the long jump pit. Ady has a new camera (for work, when my one broke he told them he needed a new one so I now have his pretty purple canon and he has a new Olympus one which has this nifty little six photos in quick succession so you can choose the best one, which means we have filled flickr with very slightly different from the pictures before and after shots 🙂 ) .
We left there and had a bit of a walk into the downs before coming home again, via Mum and Dad’s (still no Frazer so we didn’t stop) with more chick free-ranging in the lounge, tea, haircut for Davies, bath and Dr Who before packing children off to bed.

And now I’m off to bed too – swimming lessons first thing followed by some carbooting and a fairly lazy rest of Sunday.

yep, first things first, winner of the name the fifth Goddard chick competition is Claudia. Adult votes were more inclined towards Kiev or Nugget but Davies and Scarlett were unanimous in their decision of Rhonda. Of course, much though we might pretend we can tell the difference between the three yellow chicks we can’t, so currently Freddie, Punzel and Rhonda are pretty much interchangable. Feathers is very distinctive with his single wing and is rather smaller than the others, which means Wobble is unique too for now. The decision to keep any hens is pretty final, we would keep one cockerel only so I hope there is only one among them as rearing extra ones to eat is above even us ;).

I’ve worked today, it’s been a good day aside from being told I’m too nice and need to work on my bitching 😆 I heard today that there is a plan afoot to use a mobile library van as a touring winnebago and set ourselves up as prostitutes should the library ever look in danger of closing. Everyone has roles, some of them are on the administrative / cleaning / driving side rather than ‘active service’ but I was told I could go straight into money making and to give some consideration as to my ‘speciality service’ to discuss with them next time I’m in 😆 Workplace discussion of which borrowers are likely perverts, who should win The Apprentice and what films to borrow next abounded, the day went pretty quickly. 🙂

I got home to find both my parents here, chick worshipping 🙂 I actually thought our plan to keep chickens would be categorised alongside some of our more wacky decisions such as not sending our children to school, confessing to having two tents, getting £60K odd into debt and not going to university but no, they are fully supportive of this idea and Dad was casing up the garden in search of likely sites for a coop while Mum was trying to persuade the children we only need four chickens as there is four of us and she should have the fifth one (honestly, she was the same when we got Malice and Candle trying to persuade me she should have Candle instead :roll:). I let them all have cuddles, which I think they’d been desperate for but restrained themselves, Mum had brought posh M&S biscuits so that was nice. 🙂 Dad left, Ady came home, Mum left, we had a bit of a free range session with the chicks let loose in the lounge (lots of chick poo and cheeping!) and the children went off to bed.

We were supposed to be camping with Chris and Julie this weekend but various contributing factors meant it was cancelled so a pretty quiet weekend lies ahead with not a lot other than chick bonding on the agenda. Perfect 🙂

This morning started ridiculously early for me at 6am when the children woke up and discovered 3 chicks and had started even earlier for Ady who left around 430am to go to places like Birmingham. We were up, dressed, breakfasted and at the newly opened down the road Petsmart or Pet City or whatever they’re calling themselves before it even opened at 9am. We had a bit of a wander round there looking at rabbits, hamsters and various fish before getting the cat food we’d gone in for and chatting to a very consciencious worker about stick insects, guinea pigs and reptiles.

We came home and did more hatchwatching and chick worship with constant updates to Ady on the road about progress as it happened. I’d promised to ‘do stuff’ with the children today so at their request we played codebreaker for a while and then I offered to do some baking with them. Davies wanted to make biscuits and Scarlett snickerdoodles, so we made both. I assembled sugar, butter and flour infront of Davies with the scales and just told him ‘weigh out 6oz flour’ which he did, then I helped him a little with the butter and he rubbed it all in before being told how much sugar to add and weighing and adding that himself. He then did most of the rolling and cutting and placing on the baking sheet with occassional ‘what could you do differently to stop the mixture sticking to the board, the rolling pin and your hands do you think?’ type comments from me. He opened the oven himself, put the sheets in, swapped sheets about, took them out of the oven and moved them onto cooling racks all with total calm and maturity. Very proud 🙂 Scarlett supervised the weighing out of sugar and butter telling me when the scales said the right amount and did the creaming together of that with fairly minimal help, I added the eggs and flour, she did a fair bit of the mixing and then I finished it off and dropped balls of mixture into sugar and cinnamon for her to roll and put on the baking sheet. She also had a go at putting them from the baking sheet to the cooling racks when they were done. I remember being desperate to do baking when I was a child and aside from it simply not being something my Mum did for fun (I do recall assisting in the 1000s of mince pies made every December once she bought her first sandwich bar business, but I would have been 7 or 8 by then and helping was limited to brushing the lids with milk) she probably would still be stood over me waiting to take over and do it ‘properly’ now if she watched me bake let alone encouraging me to challenge myself and do stuff with responsibilities. I learnt loads about baking from a teacher at school who was really old fashioned and alongside teaching us all how to iron a shirt properly and brew the perfect cup of tea would delight us each week in Home Economics by walking round our little kitchen areas and proclaiming one girl the ‘queen of the quiche’ or ‘madame of the pineapple upside down cake’ depending on what we were making. 😆 I mixed up some red icing and spread it over the biscuits then the children had a bowl of decorations each to overload them with.

I got all the dirty washing done, all hung out and at least half of it brought in again dry, so that was a result. I didn’t get any further with decluttering but as I’ve certainly not sat around on my arse all day today I won’t be beating myself up about that. 😆

We had lunch, the one winged chick finally broke out of it’s shell – it’s since been named by Ady and answers to the name of ‘Feathers.’ I wanted ‘Blair’ or something else suitable for it only having a left wing but as I’d already named one Feathers it is :). We all gathered round a little later for the final egg hatching, which I caught on video again so Scarlett got to witness two hatchings as well which was great as that main event was a big part of doing the whole thing. The incubator has been cleaned up and is going back to Bruce tomorrow, whatever happens from here on in we certainly won’t be hatching any more eggs this year.

The children played for a while with the toy animals and then wanted to do some drawing. Davies wanted me to show him how to use the spirograph we picked up at a car boot sale a while back but we then got engrossed in sorting out the pen drawer instead. Scarlett proved to be a demon pencil sharpener, whizzing through a big pile at great speed, while Davies and I chucked out all the not working any more felt tips and the broken crayons. I started scribbling to test the pens but then we got onto writing words and Davies went and got some stencils so we did a bit of writing words down and spelling them out and Davies asked me how to spell various words and then drew pictures of them to illustrate his writing. Oh and he played with a compass loads, making pictures from circles.

Then followed one of todays shouty episodes of which there have been a few. Frankly you don’t get me out of bed at 6am and keep me in a house all day with only sporadic adult company by way of chick hatching updates to Ady’s mobile and not have shouty episodes really 😆 but we overcame it all and I sorted the children’s tea out – Scarlett wanted eggs and toast so clearly no issues with where our food comes from and the eating of other potential ‘Punzel’ or ‘Freddies’! 😆

Ady arrived home and we all piled in his car and drove across the town to the blood donation venue as Ady and I had both had invitations through from the last session. We should have booked actual appointments rather than just arriving in a 2 hour window really as we sat for about half an hour trying to keep the children fairly quiet and amused by playing I spy and then trying to keep straight faces while trying to make each other laugh. This time I was not mutilated in the first test and was able to give blood no problem. The children did really well while Ady and I were incapacitated lying flat on our respective beds, going between the pair of us, gathering stickers from the donor aids proclaiming ‘My Mummy gave blood today’ and ‘My Daddy have blood today’ and generally charming everyone there into getting them biscuits and squash meant for the donors. They were both pretty interested in the whole idea, curious about all the medical bits and pieces and determinded to give blood themselves when they are old enough. Ady’s blood flows very quickly and as we were sitting having juice and biscuits afterwards we realised his shirt was starting to soak with blood where the needle had been having soaked through the plaster so he had to be re-plastered while I was being told off for lifting a heavy water jug with the blood-letted arm to get Davies a drink. We both seem to be in one piece still now. 🙂

It was gone 8pm by the time we got home but as we wanted to give the incubator back and the chicks are all fluffed up and ready we’d decided to transfer them to their new home which of course the children wanted to be part of. Currently they are in a plastic storage box with sawdust, water and chick crumb food with one shelf of our camp kitchen over the top and the brooder (light and heat) lamp resting on the top and they seem very happy. I’ve had an email from a freecycler responding to my plea for a cage offering a hamster cage which might be better so hopefully I can collect that tomorrow. Candle is *very* interested in them so we’ve decided to keep them in the playroom with the door shut by night to prevent her terrorising them or injuring herself on the brooder lamp and then back in the lounge in the day so the children can observe them as much as possible. Chick number five is currently being addressed as ‘competition’ so no doubt we’ll be deciding on a name from all the suggested ones sometime tomorrow and annoucing it.

Children finally went to bed, Ady and I had baths and ate a very late dinner infront of Grand Designs. Hurrah for Friday tomorrow!

Welcome Freddie, born yesterday evening and named by Davies

Punzel, born during the night and named by Scarlett

Wobble, born very early this morning and named by me

This is number four, born after a very, very lengthy breaking out at lunchtime today. The reason for the struggle might well be that he appears to only have one wing. Not at all sure how this will effect him but he’s fiesty enough so far and fluffing out well, Ady will be naming him when he gets home

And finally, just hatched is number five. Our third yellow chick. Davies and Scarlett invite suggestions for naming him/her, the name we like the most will be chosen for this little chick, ideas in the comments box please 🙂

Second black one has hatched, he (sexing appears to be something we can’t do properly for ages so I think they’ll all be ‘he’ for now) took a really long time to come out and looks slightly smaller and weaker than the rest but all externally correct. The two yellow ones are fluffing out nicely and looking very very cute.

I’ve been looking online trying to get ideas of a good place to keep them for now, a hamster cage seems to be a good idea but a quick trip to the pet shop this morning (Candle had no cat food and was showing rather more interest in the chicks than I was happy with so we thought we’d better get her some food pretty quick!) suggests they are not within our budget for a couple of weeks disposable use. Will bung out a WANTED on freecycle for now. A shallowish box / drawer would be ideal if we didn’t have Candle to consider, the idea of being reliant on children closing doors to keep her out of the same room as them is a little too risky I think.

This morning we’re all up very early, so far we have Freddie (yellow), Punzel (yellow) an unnamed black chick who is mine to christen and number four is another black one in the process of hatching. Egg number five has cracks so by lunchtime we should have our full hatch. 5 out of 6 not bad given the first success rate of nil.

Later today we’ll transfer them into a box with a brooder lamp, some food and water and start hatching (boom boom!) plans about what to do with them. And no jokes about cranberry sauce at the back there just yet! 😆

noisy, noisy chick 🙂

It’s been another of those days today, I’ve decided it isn’t hormones, it’s cabin fever, wet play syndrome. All the time I get out for a couple of walks a week I seem to be capable of being nice to people most of the time, when I am trapped, mentally and physically inside with people 24 hours a day regardless of how much I might love them and regret carrying out the urges to do them physical harm should I succumb to them I fight an almost constant internal battle with some sort of anti-hero who lives inside me and hates everyone :lol:.

Today has been one of those series of small incidents coupled with a feeling of constantly being slightly behind which has left me with a pounding headache, a list of crimes against compassionate and caring motherhood stacking up against me and a pretty big desire to stand somewhere high and very visible with a loudhailer and yell ‘FUCK OFFFFFF!’ at anyone who had any inclination at all to want anything from me. So there.

NB this would not be a good time to talk to me about tables.

This morning I woken by Ady getting the extra tent out of our wardrobe ready to be packed up. I won’t rant about the fact I’ve been asking him to do this for a fortnight because if I weren’t such a lazy cow I’d have done it myself. The parcelforce man came twice to collect it and was sent away with me telling him it wasn’t ready so he asked me to just phone them on the number on the card when it was ready and he’d come and collect it then. Do you think I can find the card? Nope. Do you think I’m even 100% sure it was Parcelforce anyway? That’d be nope again. I’m going to have to contact the tent seller again, explain that I still have the tent and they need to contact their courier and ask them to come and collect it, again. All of which will no doubt create further confusion given that English is not the first language of the people I email.

Next I couldn’t find my phone holder. I have a special clip which attaches to my phone to clip onto my waistband. I use this when I’m at work wearing a Library Skirt which unlike my jeans doesn’t have a pocket to put the phone into. I do this for two reasons, one is that I am contactable at all times. I know there is a phone in the library, I know that whoever is looking after the children has the phone number of the library but I remain convinced that unless I am carrying a communication device about my person at all times I am being neglectful and as such the law of the universe dictates I will be punished by doing something dreadful to the children which I don’t learn about until it is too late because noone could contact me. The other reason is so I can use the pedometer counter inbuilt into the phone. Couldn’t find it despite pulling the sofa out, setting a reward for it’s safe return to the children and searching in all the usual places (as in, I know it is not in either of the two possible places I might have put it therefore I know it has been moved by someone else. Grr).

The search for the phone clip put back the search for items I needed to return to the library. I did a quick scout round the house gathering items and shoving them into a cloth bag ready to take to work. Which I then left on the sofa.

I’d intended to walk to work, Lucy was here nice and early, the rain wasn’t raining, but the search for the phone clip which made the search for the returned items late made my leaving for work late which meant I had to drive.

Work was fine. It was madly busy as Wednesday mornings often are. Wendy (senior library supervisor, I really must blog about all my colleagues properly, I have much amusing material to share!) had decided today would be a good day to teach me more stuff so I was shown all sorts of new things which may well have been interesting and informative were I not already building up to a headache, worrying about where I’d left the cloth bag containing about £100 worth of cds and dvds from work and where the hell the phone clip might be. Instead it just made my head spin more. As did the woman who was fretting about a psychology paper she was due to hand in tomorrow and kept cocking up the settings on the photocopier for and needing help when I was trying to do something else.

Other things which drove me to the brink were the children doing the three’s a crowd thing with Rebecca for about an hour when all I wanted to do was catch up with Lucy who had bravely taken four children to the park for the morning while I’d dealt with fools in the library all morning so we were both in need of caffine and adult conversation. Lucy and The Rs left taking five carrier bags of my old paperback books which were filling nearly two shelves on the bookcase and I know now working in a library with shelves of books I’ll never manage to read that there is zero chance of me ever bothering to read books I have on my shelf for a second time no matter how much I enjoyed the first read, so that’s more stuff out of the house. 🙂

The children then got the hama beads out despite me advising them not to and very predictably they ended up all over the floor. It was an accident but I did shriek quite frighteningly at them, they then spent HALF A BLOODY HOUR messing about clearing them up to the point where I did it, threatened to throw the whole lot in the bin and stomped off to cook their tea. Davies had to take the packaging of his dinner to Badgers as they are doing something to do with recycling so his request for peanut butter toast had to be denied :lol:. I finally calmed down after a large rant at them, they apologised, we all promised to have a better day tomorrow and peace was restored at last.

Scarlett then realised she’d not been quite as effective at her new independence (hope you’re noting that spelling 😉 ) of bottom wiping as she’d thought so she needed a bath which I’d just dumped her in with instructions to ‘wash thoroughly’ before realising we needed to leave for Badgers five minutes previously but Ady wasn’t home. He arrived, Davies and I left with Scarlett still in the bath, I dropped Davies off, went to the nearby CoOp for a big bag of humbugs and had an hours peace in the car reading a book. The rain had started raining again by then and I decided the trade off of being soggy wouldn’t be worth the joy of a walk.

Once home full excitement was brought forth by the first hatchling. It’s called Freddie as named by Davies who was still awake so came back downstairs to witness the hatching. Freddie will stay in the incubator for about another 24 hours until he is dry and fluffy before moving to a box with a brooder lamp to keep him warm and some food and water. One of the eggs still has no cracks, two are looking further along so I’m hoping for maybe one more hatching before I go to bed and the last one is cracked but not doing much. Ady and I have both confessed to pondering on ways to keep them but we’ll have to debate that a bit more sensibly before making decisions. We’ve got the space but not the cash to home them really, although all that stuff on ebay currently might fund an eglu? We’ll see….

Still can’t find that bloody phone clip though, miracle of new birth is amazing but doesn’t ease the frustration of mislaid articles.

Things are happening 🙂

Four out of the five eggs in the incubator currently look like this:

and you can hear them all cheeping!!!

I did well 🙂

I listed 38 things on ebay, two already have bids on them 🙂

I finished the book – haven’t started the next one yet but now the ebay pile is out of the way I can dedicate my time to reading the remaining four books in three weeks 🙂

Some washing is now dry, there are two loads of jeans on the line, true they have been almost constantly rained on since I hung them out there, in the rain, but they can’t get any wetter and it’s better than sitting there dirty, I’ll be one step ahead when the weather cheers up!! 🙂

Lucy and The Rs came round for lunch, which was nice but disturbed Davies and Scarlett who had been playing together really well all morning. They eventually sorted themselves out about half an hour after they left and have watched Charlottes Web together and played nicely this afternoon.

We nipped out to Sainsburys as we needed various items including fish food – (it was that or sacrcifice the smallest one and share it amoung the others) and as someone told me at MM yesterday that dalek cutters are reaching up to a fiver a piece on ebay I bought another 3 of the £1.49 boxes of cake mix containing dalek cutters – Sainsburys full stock and have listed just the cutters at a starting price of 99p each. Am entrepreneur 🙂 With spare bags of cookie dough mix and tubes of orange writing icing into the bargain 🙂

Ady passed his second mock exam HURRAH! 🙂 and is celebrating by giving his rice cooker birthday present a christening and cooking dinner tonight while I’m at reading group, and not only will I get my reading group glass of wine (only one though, it’s still pissing down here so I can’t walk in and have two glasses, I’ll have to drive 🙁 ) I can have more wine when I get home to celebrate mock exam success with him.

Off to put make up on and brush hair for reading group.

I thought I was giving blood today but I’ve just checked the letter and it’s Thurday instead. So I’m going to continue being efficient and productive instead:

Get some washing done – I’ve brought in the least soggy stuff off the line and as we’ve relented to turning the heating back on again it’s airing rather than drying. I’ve sorted all the laundry into piles and started the first load – even if it’s going to hang on the line it’s better clean and wet than dirty surely?

I need to finish reading a book for reading group tonight and try and make some inroads into the next one. We’re reading the short list for the Orange Prize – there are six books to read before the winner is announced on 6th June and we’re having a library event I’m not doing very well, so far I’ve read two of the books and have another four to go – doubt I’ll manage that in 3 weeks when none of them even look that appealing!

I really want to get my ebay pile listed, that’s my first task with regular breaks for reading, eating, drinking tea and quite possibly coming back here.

Kids are watching Watership Down and playing with the toy animals at the same time so they’re occupied.

I’ve put on my SuperNic T shirt and I’m off to do an hour’s photographing and ebay listing followed by an hours reading before lunch. I will be back (said with a flounce of my cape :lol:).